My Childless Dog and I

You can tell I'm tired and overwhelmed when the blog is this late and I take to writing about my dog, but I'm still here. Keep those questions and comments coming.

I live with a dog named Annie. She's almost 4 1/2, half Lab and half Staffordshire bull terrier. We started with two dogs, Annie and her brother Chico, but Chico got a little crazy and had to go live somewhere else. Losing my little boy broke my heart. But that's not the main topic today. The subject is how my dog and I are both childless.

As soon as Annie was old enough, we had her spayed, vet talk for a hysterectomy. We didn't ask her if she wanted to have puppies. Nor did we ask the two female dogs that preceded her in our lives. We just did it. We didn't want to acquire a houseful of puppies, and I never wanted to face the heartbreak of giving them away and separating them from their mother. I know that's the way it goes, and the dogs are probably fine. Annie's mom seemed relieved when the puppies were gone. When Annie met up with her mother more than a year after we adopted her, they fought, and we had to pull them apart.

We hear a lot about the need to spay and neuter our pets to keep from having too many unwanted animals, and most of us do it because we really only want the one dog or cat and we don't want the hassle of dealing with baby animals. We only allow our pets to mate when we want them to have babies. Otherwise, we strive to keep males and females apart.

Some advocates of the childfree lifestyle argue that we ought to do the same for people because there are too many of us. They fight for the right to have their tubes tied, often encountering doctors who refuse to do the surgery because they might change their minds.

Me, I never got spayed. I still have all my parts, but I never used them to make babies. Now Annie and I hang out together, two childless females mothering each other into old age.

*****

Ellen Walker, author of Complete Without Kids, interviewed me about my book recently for her Psychologytoday.com blog, and it was published Sunday. Give it a look at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blogs/complete-without-kids/2012-7/are-you-childless-marriage. You might want to subscribe to her blog. It's full of good things, and we're all sisters in this childless game. Annie, too.

We are entitled to grieve for the children we never had

In nearly 300 posts at this blog, the one that has engendered the most comments is is a two-paragraph entry I posted in 2007. Titled "Are You Grieving Over Your Lack of Children?" it quotes a newspaper article about a woman dealing with childless grief, then asks the readers, "Have you come to terms with not having children?" We're up to 98 comments so far, with new ones coming almost every day.

Clearly grief is a big issue for us. People who are not in our situation don't seem to get it. They'll tell us "oh well, you can adopt" or "the world has two many people in it anyway" or "get over it" or even "sometimes I wish I didn't have any kids."

It's not that easy, is it? When we want children and we don't get to have them, we have lost something huge. In some ways, it's like a death. We have lost the children we would have had, along with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. If we hang up stockings at Christmas, there will be only two--or one if we're single. When we see someone cuddling their new baby, we feel pain. At all the times when our parenting friends celebrate the milestones in their children's lives, we feel left out.

Yes, there are advantages as well as losses to life without children. We are free to do things we couldn't do if we were raising children. We miss a lot of heartache and frustration along with the good times. And yes, we can be beloved aunts or uncles, teachers or friends to other people's kids.

However, we have a right to grieve. And the grief will come back again and again, like any big loss. Does it get easier with time? Yes. Being past menopause has helped a lot. But the grief never completely goes away. Just last night, I found myself crying over a TV show where a baby was born. Again!

All I'm saying is we're entitled to feel the loss of the children we might have had.

I welcome your comments. 

Childless by Marriage the paperback is here

Dear friends,

Copies of the paperback edition of the Childless by Marriage book are in the house. All over the house actually. After more than a decade, the book is complete and, for better or worse, it's in print. If you want to help me pay for them and clear up the house by buying many many copies, I'd love it. If you decide not to, keep coming back to the blog anyway.

It's a beautiful book, which I can't believe I'm holding in my hand. In a way, it's my sixth child, following The Iberian Americans, Stories Grandma Never Told, Azorean Dreams, Freelancing for Newspapers, and Shoes Full of Sand. (Info at http://www.suelick.com/Products.html). As the baby, it will require extra care until it can stand up on its own.

I have begun to realize that this book, which is very personal, may also be controversial. There isn't one chapter that people couldn't find something to argue about. If you don't have children in this world full of parents, you know that some people just don't understand. They may get angry when I talk about the "mom club." My chapters on step-parenting might set them off. The "childfree" crowd may object to my pro-child stance, might rage about my Catholic orientation, might take offense at what I say about the angry minority who call women who want children "breeders." I'll get guff from people who refuse to admit there are any psychological or physical differences between mothers and women who have never had children. I'll hear from people who believe old age is no different without children than it is with them. I've been in the writing business long enough to know that I'll hear objections about things I never suspected would irritate people. The reviews will probably be either five stars or no stars, love or hate with nothing in-between. Writing is easy; this is the scary part.

I'm really worried about what my father and my church friends will say, but our stories need to be told, and I could not go to my grave without publishing this book. I hope you all will continue to support me in this Child by Marriage life we share. Thank you, all you anonymous and named readers, for all of your love and support. It means a lot to me.

See you Thursday.

A few lines send me over the edge

I'm deep into the novel I'm reading, an engrossing tale of life on the Oregon trail, when a paragraph hits me so hard I'm jolted back into real life as if I just fell off a cliff onto the rocks below. I lie there bruised, looking up at the sun and wondering how this happened to me.

The book is A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher. We're in the mind of James McLaren, a trader and guide who finds himself alone in the mountains where his children died and his wife has gone missing. He is thinking of the old Indian woman friend who is dying nearby. She used to tell him, "A home has stories. Each hill, each river's bend, takes its name from something long ago."

Well, he thinks. His home would span a continent, by that measure. But someone had to care. Someone had to know it. It took someone else to name your life and keep it. Stories that your children told their children after.

That's when I suddenly thought: Who cares enough to name my life and keep my story? I have no children. My husband is gone. My mother is gone. My father is still alive but very old. My brother is far away, but I don't think he really understands who I am. Does anyone? I have friends, but how will they remember me when I'm gone?

At least as a writer, I can write my stories and save them in books. I know that's a blessing. But who else will name my life after I die?

It was a perfect afternoon. After a good morning's writing and a long hike with my dog Annie through a gorgeous trail laden with ferns, skunk cabbage and red alders, after seeing a bald eagle fly overhead, and now being free to laze in this blessed sun that we haven't seen here all week, it only took a few lines in a book to send me over the edge.

That's how it is. It's always there, isn't it? I have managed to smile at the photos my stepdaughter posts of her granddaughter--she's adorable, but I'll probably never meet her--and I have managed to read 300 pages of a book where the main characters' children are a constant factor, but these lines did me in. Luckily, I can tell you about it and move on. After all, this is a good book, and I'm anxious to find out what happens.

Can you remember times when some little thing made you more aware than ever of the children you never had?

"If I don't get babies . . . "

I always had this dream of being a mother who was also a professional writer. When I married Fred, it seemed as if at least half this dream might come true. When he proposed, my first reaction, after saying yes and crying happy tears was to announce that finally I could freelance. Hold on a minute, Fred said. He was counting on me adding to the family income. I tried hard, but the newspaper business was tough even back then. With a book contract and regular outlets for me work, I moved into full-time freelancing in 1987, two years after we were married. 

Then, four years into our marriage, Fred's youngest son, Michael, moved in with us. What follows is a brief passage from my Childless by Marriage book. 

We rented a house up against the south San Jose foothills. Moving into a suburban neighborhood full of young families, we paid our $1,200 a month and tried to save a little here and there. I was fully committed to freelancing, not even considering looking for a job, and now I had a live-in son. It seemed that I had finally realized my dream of being a stay-at-home mother-writer.

In January 1989, my book money ran out, and my two main article clients both went bust. Our expenses had gone up. Fred was the kind of guy who liked to stay out of debt and have a comfortable cash cushion in savings. A barely employed freelance writer wife did not add much to the bank account.

By March, Fred had begun suggesting that I get a job. I wanted to stay home and write books. Over the years, we have rarely fought, but I held my ground this time. I had been working as hard as I could to earn money with my writing, plus I was helping to raise his son without being able to have my own children. After many more years of the ups and downs of the writing business, including a couple more full-time jobs, the memory is blurry now. But back then I was very clear about it in my journal. “If I don’t get babies, I’m damn well going to get books.”

   
So I continued to freelance, and I did not have a baby with Fred. 

So there. The e-book is already available at Amazon.com, and the paperback is being bound right now. I should have copies to mail next week. Remember, if you order directly from me at sufalick@gmail.com before Aug. 1, you can have the book for $15, with no shipping charges. 

Look how much money you're saving

I just got home from my trip to eastern Oregon, so I'm going to cheat a little and let other people entertain you today.

First, I received an email telling me about this graphic full of statistics about having children and how much it costs. You may read it and decide you don't care about any of that, you just want to have a baby. But maybe you'll decide to take all that money you've saved and do something special with it. (There's a great house for sale down the street from me, if you need a suggestion. Two blocks from the beach) You can see the graphic at http://www.earlychildhoodeducation.com/cost-of-a-child.

An article in the Bangor Daily News called "Childless and loving it: Not being a parent has advantages for families and kids" talks about how many adults without children are forming meaningful connections with young people. The author, Amy Blackstone, maintains that in this busy world, we need folks who are free to interact with other people's kids.

Finally, my dear friend Andi Cumbo, whom I never thought of as being childless, has written a great blog post about her own childless journey and how frustrated she gets when her church seems to consider motherhood the only path for women. You can read it at http://www.andilit.com/2012/07/14/childless-does-not-mean-incomplete.

Enjoy. See you Thursday.

P.S. I should have copies of my new book to mail next week. Wahoo!

Playing with the kids at camp

It's my last full day at Fishtrap, which one participant dubbed "camp with pencils." We're near Joseph in far northeastern Oregon, a land of high mountains and real cowboys. We live in tents and yurts, attend workshops, eat cafeteria-style meals, listen to readings every night, and finish off our days with music around the campfire or drinks at Russell's in Wallowa Lake. At any time of day or night, you can see people huddled over their notebooks or laptop computers writing. It's as if we have finally found people just like us. These people come in all ages and stages of life.

Fishtrap has a substantial youth program, so there's a large cadre of teens here. Some have come with their parents or grandparents, each participating in their own programs. Others are here on scholarship with adult chaperones. We also have college-age interns. I'm loving hangin out with the young ones. Last night a high school girl borrowed my guitar and played a great song. You could tell she's just learning to play, but I felt such a comraderie, as well as a little motherliness. I'm thrilled at the talent just blooming in these kids.

In my songwriting workshop, we have two college girls, a few baby boomers like me, and Alfred, who is 86 and amazing. We have different levels of life experience and musical training, but we're all trying to write good songs.

One of our assignments was to interview each other. I traded interviews with Ryann, a senior at Whitman College. She's beautiful, intelligent, talented and so young. I'm sure I'm way older than her mother, but it's never as if she's a kid and I'm an old lady. I'm proud of her and glad to claim her as my friend, and she's excited when my songs come out well.

There is a beauty in being able to connect with young people who are not our children. I have noticed that the folks who brought their own kids frequently had their writing and socializing interrupted by the needs of their offspring. I didn't have to worry about that, nor did I have to keep checking in at home.

Childlessness can be tough, but there are ways to bring young people into our lives as their friends, their mentors, their teachers, or their aunts. I highly recommend it.